Untitled #52

Sunil Gupta (1953 - )

digital print

1982

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  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Department for Work & Pensions, Caxton House, Tothill Street
    This work is part of 'London', a 1982 series of 60 street scenes photographed during Sunil Gupta’s MA studies at the Royal College of Art. The photographs were taken near his Fulham home and in the West End around London’s commercial galleries. Gupta was alert to the difficulty of navigating Britain as an openly gay Asian man in the 1980s, in contrast to his first foray into street photography as a student in New York, which he recalled as free and open. Gupta’s London scenes are acutely observant, often poetic, evocations of class, age and race in urban multicultural London.
  • About the artist
    Born in India in 1953, Sunil Gupta emigrated with his family to Canada where, as a teenager, he discovered his homosexuality and became increasingly drawn to photography. In 1976–77 he lived in New York, abandoning business studies to photograph street life and gay culture. From 1977–80 he studied photography at Farnham University for the Creative Arts, Surrey; completed an MA in photography at the Royal College of Art in 1983; and was awarded a PhD from the University of Westminster in 2018. An artist, filmmaker, curator and writer whose practice is committed to advocating for queer identity and freedom, Gupta has exhibited in the UK and internationally for over four decades. His retrospective, Sunil Gupta: From Here to Eternity is currently at The Photographers' Gallery, London, touring to the Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto in 2021.
  • Explore
    Places
    London
    Subjects
    People, man, woman, crowd, shopping, street, shop
    Materials & Techniques
    digital photographic print, digital print, inkjet print
  • Details
    Artist
    Sunil Gupta (1953 - )
    Title
    Untitled #52
    Series Title
    London 1982
    Edition
    Number 1 in an edition of 5, plus 2 artist's proofs
    Date
    1982
    Medium
    digital print
    Dimensions
    height: 71.1 cm; width: 106.7 cm
    Acquisition
    Purchased from the artist March 2021, through the Art XUK project 2020-21
    Inscription
    recto: signed by the artist 'Untitled #52, London 1982 / Sunil Gupta - 1/5 - print 2020'
    Provenance
    Hales Gallery; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 18 March 2021
    GAC number
    18906